Activities

The fun began after club president, Mary Eldridge, provided the students with the basics of the game such as equipment details, the mechanics of shooting, basic rules and instructions on how to keep score.  Then the players chose their cues, picked their partners and made their way to the courts.  There were singles games on two courts and doubles games on the other six courts.  

Mary moved from court to court to answer questions and to perfect the shooting techniques and the score keeping of the players.  The kids had a great time and several of them were surprisingly good shooters.  There was a lot of refreshing enthusiasm on the courts.    

The students were accompanied by a number of parents and teachers.  At around 5 o'clock, pizza was ordered from Dominos and about a half an hour later the pizza party began.   

Parents, teachers and kids then had a chance to play for a while before the party ended at 6:15pm.  

Everything was cleaned up and put away by 6:30 and we were all heading down the road soon afterward.

This was a wonderful opportunity to introduce new players to the game of shuffleboard and to introduce another organization to the recreational opportunities available to the community at the St. Pete Shuffleboard Club.

November 3rd turned out to be a beautiful and very busy day at the club.

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October 8, 2005
Great Gatsby Day  
On Saturday, October 8th, the Sunshine Center will hold a "Great Gatsby Day" at the Mirror Lake Recreation Complex.

A "Gatsby Day" is a day devoted to the fun and games of the 1920s as experienced by the writers F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.   F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the book The Great Gatsby.

Participants will be able to play shuffleboard, lawn bowling, croquet and cards.  There will also be an afternoon dance in the ballroom of the shuffleboard club.

Light refreshments such as iced tea, lemonade, etc. will be available. 

This activity is a fund raiser for the Sunshine Center and the admission is $3.00 per person, $5.00 per couple or $8.00 per family.

Come out and enjoy this community activity.  The fun starts at 11 am and goes until 5 pm.  You are invited to wear "period" clothing, if you have it.

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July 4, 2005
Holiday Games and Picnic
28 members attended our 4th of July activities.  Chris Kelly and Mary put up the flags (U.S. and Florida) to celebrate the holiday.  Our new flag pole looks great.

Chris said a few words to the assembled members to commemorate the first use of the new flag pole.

We played "nickel-games" (30 minute games) on courts 21 through 27, starting around 10:15 am.  In the "nickel-games" everyone moves to another court after each game - like in yellow & black games.  If you win a "nickel-game", you get a nickel from your opponent and if you lose a game you give a nickel to your opponent.  We had several close games and everyone had fun. 

This was the first chance that some of our regular members have had to socialize and play with some of our new members.  It was a good "getting-to-know-you" activity.

After the games we all went into the  air-conditioned "ballroom" and had a picnic.  We had the usual picnic fare:  hot dogs, chicken, ribs, potato salad, cole slaw, pasta salad, macaroni salad, lots of baked beans, pickles, chips, watermelon and soft drinks.  There was plenty of everything for seconds and thirds.

We had planned to have a drawing for an iPod Shuffle.  However, just before we began serving  the picnic Chris Kelly announced that the members had decided to award the iPod to Mary.  Mary said that it was totally unexpected and a delightful surprise when she accepted the iPod.  She thanked everyone for their generosity.    

Thanks to Chris Kelly, Debbie, Kristy, Heidi, Randall, Chris Page, Patrick, Joyce, Phyllis, Bob, Patty and Mary for their help in the set-up and the clean-up of the picnic.  It certainly is nice to have plenty of willing workers to get the job done quickly.

Thanks to those of our members who are also members of the Pinellas Heritage for their donation of the chicken and ribs and some of the salads for the picnic. Thanks also to Ralph Clark for his generous donation to the picnic costs.

We were ready to leave around 1:30 pm.  Many had other picnics and get-togethers planned for the rest of the day. 

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June 23, 2005
"Scrubbin' Da Burg"

"Scrubbin' Da Burg" is an annual St. Petersburg City program that involves teens in a community  service project.  Teens are transported from city recreation centers to various sites for a morning of clean-up activities. This is the first time the club has participated in this project.

We had over 60 young people scrubbing, scraping and cleaning all over the club.  The teens were here from 10 am to about 1 pm.  They cleaned the seats in the grandstand, scraped paint from the bleachers and swept up leaves around the courts.

We were honored to have St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker stop in to thank the young people for their excellent work.  Club President Mary Eldridge and the Mayor stopped for a quick snapshot to commemorate the day.  We thank the Mayor for this great program.   

  
These girl friends pitched in and did some sweeping on the courts in section 2 - behind the grandstand.  They did a great job and they had a lot of fun.  We certainly appreciated their youthful enthusiasm and energy.

Several adults were on hand to work with the teens.  The "Scrubbin' Da Burg" group came with four or five leaders and we worked with those leaders to assign teens to various jobs.  A number of our St. Pete Shuffle crew were here to get organized before the group arrived and to help out while they were here. These included Joyce Linna, Christine Page, Shirley O'Sullivan, Anna Sauer, Chris Kelly, Chad Mize, Phillip Clark  and Mary Eldridge.

When the work was done it was time to play.  We set up 16 courts and got the kids out there playing shuffleboard.  Most of them learned how to shoot and how to keep score.  Since they were all complete beginners, they spent most of their time just trying make scores.  As we have found with other teen groups, these kids picked up the delivery very quickly.  We are planning to work with the groups to develop an additional shuffleboard activity on a weekly basis. 

We are so happy and proud to have been a participant in this year's "Scrubbin' Da Burg".  We enjoyed the teens and we thank them very much for all their efforts.  We are also glad that so many enjoyed playing shuffleboard.  We look forward to future participation.

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The Text of Jay Cridlin's Article
 

An Old Game's Retro Revival

An 81-year-old shuffleboard club attracts a young crowd with energy to burn. By JAY CRIDLIN, Times Staff Writer Published May 11, 2005

The Artillery, a group of young artists in St. Petersburg is teaming with Pinellas Heritage to revitalize the old world famous shuffleboard club in downtown St. Petersburg. For the last few weeks, they've gathered to play shuffleboard on Friday night. They say they really hope to spruce up a historic part of the city, a piece of real St. Petersburg.

ST. PETERSBURG - Lars Lucas is not the kind of guy who likes to be seen gabbing on a cell phone in public. So when a business partner called en route to Paris on Friday night, Lucas had to cut him off.

"Hey, can I call you back?" he said. "I'm in the middle of a shuffleboard tournament."

There was a pause. With the phone pressed to his ear, the 38-year-old jewelry artist turned to friends and grinned. "He's laughing," Lucas said with a giggle.

It is kind of funny, the notion that a group of hip 20- and 30-somethings might give up their Friday nights to play a sport more popular among septuagenarians and cruise ship passengers.

But over the past month, a swelling crowd has turned out at the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club for weekly matches organized by a group of preservationists and young artists. They view art, listen to music and mingle with friends, just as they would in a loft or bar. Only they're doing it on the city's historic shuffleboard courts.

"It's, like, kitschy beyond kitschy. It's uber-kitsch," said Phillip Clark, director of the Artillery, the St. Petersburg artists' collective behind the tournaments. "It's this weird, seemingly old person's sport. But it's just dying to have someone come in and freshen it up."

The first Friday, fewer than 10 players showed up. The next week, it was 20. Then 30. Last Friday's matches drew a crowd of about 40, including several families and downtown residents.

" "Friday Night Shuffleboard' is maybe not the first thing you'd think about," said 29-year-old Neal Wolfrath, who lives nearby, during a break in last Friday's action. "But the vibe is just real cool, and the atmosphere is real relaxed. Right now, it's kind of underground, which is cool."

The goal, organizers say, is to reinvigorate one of downtown St. Petersburg's most historic locales. Artillery members and preservationists plan to work throughout the summer to spruce up the 81-year-old club, scraping paint from the windows and rust from antique light masts.

The club's annual budget is only about $5,000, funded partly through dues and fees, which range from $1 for a daily pass to $40 for a yearly family membership. At its peak, the club boasted more than 5,000 members; now that number is down to 110, many of whom are in their 60s and 70s.

"What the club really needs is an injection of life, youth, vigor, enthusiasm - people who want to play and have fun, but also have enough energy so that once in a while we can all undertake some kind of a project," said club president Mary Eldridge.

About five weeks ago, Chris Kelly, a local historical activist instrumental in restoring Greenwood Cemetery, bumped into Clark and partner Chad Mize over lunch at Evos. Clark and Mize, who moved to St. Petersburg from Boston two years ago, had passed by the shuffleboard courts countless times, but not until Kelly invited them for a tour did they ever step foot inside.

Kelly pointed out the cracking terrazzo courts, rusting fixtures and peeling paint. "The facility can be made to look charmingly neglected," he said. "Now it's just full-on neglected."

Said Clark: "The more we started talking about it, the more we were like, this place is so amazing, so historic. It just needs a little bit of work done to it.

"And then once we began playing the actual game of shuffleboard, we became addicted," he added. "We laugh about it now, but we are so into it."

Lucas, too, laughed off the concept at first. But then he remembered how much fun he had playing shuffleboard during family vacations as a child, and he decided to give it a go.

"I really hope it goes to a younger crowd," he said. "You can see the camaraderie."

Pushing a shuffleboard cue feels a little like gently closing a heavy drawer. The game requires fluid motion and a delicate touch, like pool and even bowling - two sports that have also experienced a resurgence in the past decade.

"We have your hipsters with their tattoos," said Mize, who wore a homemade "SHUFFLE OR DIE" T-shirt Friday night. "There's families, gays, straights - it's just a big mix of different types of people."

Some passers-by are drawn in by the trippy jazz and world music booming from a courtside sound system. Each week, organizers plug an iPod loaded with their favorite tracks into the speakers, lending the event a true party vibe. Last week it was Mize's mix, everything from Aimee Mann and Bran Van 3000 to Lou Reed and Gladys Knight.

Eldridge usually plays the role of den mother to the shuffleboard newbies, doling out praise for solid shots, giving tips when needed and explaining the game's lexicon to a younger generation.

She hasn't heard of anything like this anywhere else in the state, she said. But if the Friday night crowds continue to grow, the game could find a younger audience across Florida.

"St. Pete has always been the first place to do anything in shuffleboard," Eldridge said. "Whatever happens in St. Pete will eventually happen everywhere else."

Locally, Kelly doesn't see why this summerlong experiment can't catch on. Many of the players live and work in downtown St. Petersburg, he said, so it feels like they have a stake in preserving the the community's landmarks.

"There's so many people in these neighborhoods downtown who are younger and who appreciate historic preservation in their homes," he said. "If you can fill a space with people who are creative, it's a magnet in and of itself."

But the biggest draw, players say, is the game itself.

"It's very nostalgic," said Clark, 30. "There's something so St. Pete about it, and I think that's what makes it so great."

Jay Cridlin can be reached at 727 893-8339 or cridlin@sptimes.com

SHUFFLE ON OVER The St. Pete Shuffle, a weekly series of shuffleboard matches organized by Pinellas Heritage and the Artillery, takes place from 6 to 10 p.m. Fridays at the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club, 559 Mirror Lake Drive N. For more information, call 727 822-2083 or visit www.theartillery.com or www.pinellasheritage.com

"First Night" Shuffleboard Fun On New Year's Eve
On New Year's Eve (December 31, 2004) we had glow-in-the-dark (Cosmic or Galactic) shuffleboard and regular shuffleboard for the general public as part of St. Petersburg's "First Night" Program.  We were very fortunate to have beautiful weather and a full moon for this activity.  This was the second year we have participated in this community activity.

Don Breau and Mary Eldridge had lined four courts out behind the grandstand with fluorescent paint so that the lines would "glow-in-the-dark" when we played from 7 pm to 11 pm. They also waxed the courts. The disks were fluorescent and the cues had fluorescent stripes on them so all of the equipment could be seen under the black lights.

The 8 tournament courts were lit so players could also play regular shuffleboard in front of the grandstand.

We had about 250 participants with the majority of them coming from 7 until about 10. After 10 pm, participation tapered off and there was a mini-surge just before 11 pm.

The black lights were not as "strong" as they were last year so the playing equipment did not "glow" with the same intensity that it did last year. The 500 watt bulbs really do the job right.  This year we had some extra light on the Cosmic courts because the canopies that were removed during the summer used to block out some of the light from the street lights.  Now we get a full blast of light from the street lights and also from the new security lights installed near the office.  And, of course, the light from that full moon bathed the courts.

However, everyone still had a great time on both the Cosmic courts and the regular courts.  The four hours (from 7 to 11) just "flew" by.

Thanks to Don and Mary for the preparation of the equipment and the facility for the event and also thanks to Joyce Linna, Jack Stonger, Rosemary Otmar and Richard Stimer for their help with the participants on New Year's Eve.  Their help made the evening a lot more fun for everyone.   It sure is nice to start the new year off with a show of community spirit. 

Happy New Year to all!!

Beginner's Course Coming
We will soon launch our online Shuffleboard Beginner's Course and when we do, we will convert this "Activities" page into a "gateway page" to the course.

The course will have its own section in the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club website.  The new section will also have its own page format and style and it will, initially, be dedicated to providing basic game instruction for beginners.

Our purpose is to bring the content of our regular Beginner's Course to the web so that anyone, anywhere may learn how to play this classic game in the comfort of their own home or club and at the time of their own choosing.  

Our future plans for the new section include more advanced classes for those players who are interested in competitive play and more general information about various aspects of outdoor (or court) shuffleboard.

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